


my father has no sons

by blithelybonny



Series: call me son (one more time) [8]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drinking, Father-Son Relationship, Jack "Running From My Problems Sure Is Grand" Zimmermann, M/M, Power Dynamics, Smoking, implied infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 01:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13113552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithelybonny/pseuds/blithelybonny
Summary: Jack has always known how to bring Kenny to his knees.





	my father has no sons

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again - the actual comic's update was lovely and happy and bursting with love, so here I (and #hellsquad) am to make it sad. Because I am a ruiner who ruins. <3
> 
> Please mind the tags as usual, and the title as always is from Hamilton.

The Aces come to town early this year which feels kind of like an omen. 

Jack closes his running diary app, puts his phone down next to him, and stays on the stairs to stretch out his tight calf muscles. He ran a little longer than he usually does this morning. He ran a little longer than he usually does every morning for the last two weeks. His calves have been protesting a little, but it’s not like he’s going to do anything to overwork himself.

His phone chimes. It’s a text from his father.

**Dad (9:15 AM): good luck tonite - i’ll be watching! let me take u for a drink after?**

Jack wonders, and then hates himself for wondering, if this text was actually meant for him.

“Hun?” comes Bitty’s shout from probably the kitchen. “You comin’ in? I made omelettes!”

Jack stares at the text for another minute. Then, he sets his phone down on the stairs, gets up, and pushes off into a jog back out the front gate. Maybe just one more time around the block will do it.

\-- --

The game might be particularly brutal or it might be just typical Aces hockey—Jack doesn’t really know because it flies by in a blur. He scores once and gets two assists because even when he’s not all there, his body still knows what to do on the ice. The difference is that usually he spends the post-game furious with himself for not doing better, for allowing himself to get lost in his head, especially when he knows that his father is up in the booth commenting on his performance. Tonight, he just showers off the fog, rubs a little Bengay into the bruise that’s forming on his right hip, accepts an affectionate manhandling hug from Tater, and slips out of the dressing room without a whole lot of fanfare.

Kent’s sitting in a chair turning his phone over and over in his hands and staring at the wall across from him. He looks as tired as Jack feels.

“Are you waiting for me, Kenny?” The irony tastes bitter in his mouth. The nickname doesn’t. 

“Not specifically, no,” Kent sighs out, as he rubs his thumb over the tattoo on his index finger.

It’s a nervous habit—Jack doesn’t know how he knows that, though. He wasn’t around when Kent got that tattoo and he hasn’t seen him since the wedding, but he knows somehow with perfect clarity that this is something Kent does when he’s nervous.

And that doesn’t make any sense. Kenny was always the one who was so confident. He was brazen, even. He was the one who smirked and teased and played around and made it seem like nothing was wrong even when Jack was shaking apart inside. He was always fine. Kenny was always fine, and Jack—Jack wonders who did this to Kent. Wonders who changed Kent.

After a long moment, Kent sighs again and asks, “Was there something else, Jack?”

Jack frowns, but then his phone chimes with a text, just as Kent’s does.

**Dad (10:21 PM): finishing up post-game. be down in a few**

When he looks back up, Kent’s halfway down the hall, tension visible in the set of his shoulders and the rigid line of his spine.

“Wait, Kenny.”

“Can you not—fuck!” Kent cuts himself off and turns back around, dragging a hand through his still-wet hair. He takes a deep breath and continues, more calmly, “Sorry, but can you just not, uh, call me that? It feels weird. Please.”

“Sorry,” Jack says softly.

Kent swallows hard and says, “It’s just...I mean, you’re not my Zimms anymore, so it’s not, um, it’s not really fair for me to still be your Kenny. You know?”

“I know.” Jack’s phone chimes again, and he sees Kent twitch his hand towards his pocket at the same time. “Get a drink with me?” he asks.

“I—don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kent replies, even as he takes a few steps closer, narrowing the gap between them, consciously or not.

“Yeah, it’s a terrible idea,” Jack replies, walking forward as well. “But, euh—”

“Okay, let’s do it,” Kent interrupts, and there’s something in his face that Jack’s pretty sure he recognizes. The ghost of something from when they were young.

“Okay, good.” Jack closes his hand around the place at Kent’s neck where his shoulder joins, and he squeezes gently. 

“Trying to take me down?” Kent mutters, that same funny half-smile on his lips.

Jack doesn't know what he means, but then he remembers—they were sixteen and carefree, except that Jack doesn't think he was ever carefree even for a moment, and they liked to wrestle. It was close enough to getting off to feel good, but far enough away to pretend and deny if they were caught. Jack would squeeze that same spot and Kent would buckle with a laugh and a “no fair, your hands are giant!”

“No,” Jack answers, because he thinks it's true, and Kent drops his chin to his chest before he breaks away. He still beckons Jack to follow him, and Jack goes easily.

\-- --

The Aces’ hotel isn’t terribly far from the stadium, and Jack doesn’t even bother pretending to drive them to a bar first.

“You want, uh…” Kent gestures towards the mini bar, as Jack shucks his suit jacket and sets it carefully on the desk chair.

“Aren’t those things like thirteen dollars for a Miller Lite?” Jack asks, as Kent cracks one open and holds it out. He takes it anyway.

“I know you’re good for it,” Kent replies, taking one for himself. Jack watches Kent suck down about half the can before making it over to sit down on the bed where he pulls his tie loose and toes out of his natty dress shoes. Kent finishes the beer with another two or three pulls.

Jack reaches for the empty can, realizes his own is also empty, and tosses both of them neatly in the trashcan next to the desk before he sits down at Kent’s side. After a moment, he starts, “You—”

“—no,” Kent answers.

“Okay,” Jack replies.

He watches Kent slide his thumb back and forth slowly over the side of his kneecap. He wonders if Kent’s got a tattoo there too, or just a scar, maybe. He stills Kent’s hand and thinks he feels a tremor, but doesn’t know if it’s Kent’s or his own.

“I—” Kent cuts off again and, with a rush of a sigh, scoots himself back so that he’s pressed up against the headboard. He straightens his legs in front of him and closes his eyes.

Jack slowly lowers his head into Kent’s lap, lets go something that sounds like a sob from somewhere deep in his chest when Kent slides his fingers through Jack’s hair and thinks, _this isn’t a gift, Kenny._

Kent’s fingers clench, and the gasp sounds like it’s torn out of him, but he recovers quickly—he always pulls himself together so easily, and Jack’s always been jealous of that—to say, “‘Course not, Z-zimms.”

He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but maybe it’s better this way. Jack’s spent thirty-odd years under the weight of words unspoken. They’ve sat on his chest and stolen his air, and on the rare occasions where he’s been able to choke them out, they’ve been wrong somehow, whether they’ve been chosen for him or they’ve been twisted beyond their intent. Words have always been the enemy, but Jack’s so tired of fighting.

“When did it—” Jack has to stop, swallows hard, waits until Kent’s fingers begin their light scritching against his scalp again. “When did it change?” He doesn’t know if he can clarify the question, if Kent asks.

Kent murmurs, “When did it stop being about you?”

Jack closes his eyes and breathes, “Yeah.” Maybe it should surprise him that Kent can still read the in-between so well, but it doesn’t. Kent’s always understood something about him that Jack doesn’t entirely know if he understands himself.

“I need a smoke,” Kent says, instead of answering—and Jack wonders if that means that it never really did stop.

Jack sits up and lets Kent get up to rummage in his duffel for a pack of cigarettes, then follows him out onto the balcony. He pauses in the doorway, though, just to watch.

Kent is silhouetted against the night like a scene out of an old movie, a curl of smoke from the cigarette between his fingertips floating up to the stars. He looks peaceful finally, all the tension from before now absent as he sucks poison into his lungs and breathes it out into the breeze.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Jack says, and he wants it to sound scolding, but it doesn’t at all. Kent’s not his to scold, anyway.

“Yeah, well, you’re not the only Zimmermann to teach me tricks that’re bad for me,” he replies.

It should hurt more than it does, the reminder. It’s possible he’s gone numb to it, though. It’s never been far from his mind since the wedding. Or it’s possible that he doesn’t care because he’s here with Kent now— _he’s_ here, and no one else is.

“What did I—” Jack stops himself because he's not sure he wants to know exactly what it is he taught Kent. 

Kent exhales another plume of smoke as Jack comes up to his side and rests his wrists on the balcony ledge. It's quiet enough that Jack hears the vibration of Kent's phone is his pocket. Kent's hand doesn't move toward it this time, and Jack lets himself move close enough to brush Kent's side. “He won't wait that long,” Kent murmurs.

“I know,” Jack answers, just as softly. “Euh...he—”

“—I knew what I was doing, Jack.”

There’s a ringing in his ears—no, not a ringing—it’s the sound of the goal horn. It’s loud and it means that he did something good, he helped his team, he’s important and necessary, and he matters to them.

Jack remembers what it was like to be afraid of never being good enough—remembers what it was like to feel like he’d never hear that sound again—remembers looking over and knowing that Kent’d be ready to pass him the puck, be ready to let him sink it into the net, be ready to slide into a celly and hold him close and make him feel grounded in the moment.

“How much of us was real, Kenny?” Jack manages.

Kent makes a strangled kind of sound and grips the balcony in front of him. “How can you ask—”

“—please, Kenny.”

“I mean, fuck,” he cries out, “all of it! Fuck, fuck, fucking FUCK,” his eyes are swimming suddenly, “all of it, Jack, that’s the whole fucking point. All of it was real, all of _us_ before you died was so fucking real, at least, goddammit—” Jack’s chest feels tight, like after a too-long run when he can’t quite catch his breath “—it was real to _me_! It was real to me, and everything that came after us? _That_ , Zimms? _That_ was bullshit.”

Jack thinks about everything that came after. He closes his eyes and says, “Am I just supposed to believe you?”

Kent laughs helplessly. “Probably not. I’m a fucking manipulator, Jack. Christ, I’m probably fucking doing it right now, I think—I don’t even...I don’t even fucking know anymore…” He trails off and rakes his hands through his hair, and Jack winces as the cigarette makes a dangerously close pass to setting Kent’s hair on fire. “I just miss my best friend,” he then quietly continues. “I miss the guy who knew everything about me. I miss what it felt like to know that no matter what happened, there was always going to be someone who had my back because he knew me so well.”

“Kenny,” Jack says, barely a breath, but enough to catch Kent’s attention from staring off in the darkness. Kent’s cheeks are wet, and he raises his free hand to swipe away the tears, looking with surprise at it for a moment, like he hadn’t even realized he was crying. But Jack knows that Kenny is a crier—has been as long as Jack has known him. Kenny used to cry when he was sad and when he was happy, when he was tired and hurt and frustrated and angry. Whenever the emotion was strong enough, Kenny cried, and he always used to hate that about himself. And maybe it’s naive, but Jack wants to believe that whatever’s happening right now, whoever he’s dealt with in the past, whoever hurt him or helped him, whoever it was then, this is the real Kent Parson now.

Kenny throws his cigarette over the railing and then takes a step back. Jack catches him—doesn’t know when he moved, only knows that Kenny needs him.

Maybe it’s the brutal honesty. Maybe it’s the vulnerability. Maybe it’s the way that they fell in sync like nearly ten years and a million hurts never got in the middle. Or maybe Jack just wants to take something back. Kenny always took. Everyone takes. Maybe it’s his turn, finally. Maybe it’s everything, or maybe—maybe it’s just that in the dark with the moonlight in his hair, Kent Parson really is Kenny again, and it makes Jack want to reach out and brush the stubborn cowlick back from his forehead. It makes Jack want to push past the prickles of anxiety, be brave and lean in until he’s close enough for their lips to brush when he speaks. But this time, he doesn’t ask softly, “ _Is this okay, Kenny_?” This time, he whispers, “This is gonna fuck everything to hell, isn’t it?”

Kenny practically vibrates in Jack’s arms as he turns his face up, brown eyes wide and blazing, and begs, “Do it anyway. Fuck me up, Zimms.”

\-- --

Jack leaves Kent’s hotel and doesn’t realize until he’s letting himself in the front door of the house that he never told Bittle he wasn’t coming straight home.

He thinks about showering—but he doesn’t want to hide. He wants Bitty to know. They shouldn’t have to have secrets, after all, not between them. So he just strips down to his shorts, climbs into bed, and wraps himself around his husband. Bitty shivers a little at first, but then molds easily to Jack’s chest and presses a sleepy kiss to the bit of skin he reaches.

And early the next morning, Jack finally texts his father back.

**You (6:12 AM): _Désolé_.**


End file.
